As readers of this article may be a part of the last group of people who were on Tumblr during its heyday, I am sure that many of you fellow writers/performers/women will remember this quote that floated across our screens, privately and quietly devastating when we discovered it at the tender age of 13—and still so now that we are a bit more grown-up.

“Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it,” Margaret Atwood writes in her novel, “The Blind Assassin.” “Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

Joey—the leading character in “Likewise,” a senior capstone project in self-generated performance written and performed by Kiera Moran ’24—understands this sentiment deeply. The play centers around the fallout between childhood friends Joey and Callie (Paige Merril ’26). Joey spends the show’s full-hour runtime entirely on stage, where she grapples with severe mental health issues, suicidal ideation, and sexual violence under the revealing glare of the spotlights. Perhaps she even basks in it; the play is filled with witty “Fleabag”-esque asides to the audience and includes an emotional scene where she narrates the earliest context of the play during a stand-up comedy bit that made me ugly-cry in the front row. Joey is clever, sharp, magnetic, and, for lack of a better phrase, throughly fucked up. Like a car crash, you can’t look away from her.

“Every woman and girl I’ve talked to has a devastating best friend breakup from their adolescence,” Moran said. “The only people who you trust a lot at that age, at least in my experience, with your deepest darkest secrets and all the things you’re scared of, are other children. There’s this really beautiful connection and also this very intense weight that comes from having someone who is your everything, who is also a child, that you depend on for the emotional validation you need to get through young adulthood as a girl.”

Merril—who plays the only other character to come on stage, and who, even then, does so only briefly—reiterates the introspection necessary to “Likewise,” as well as the relatability of its performance and of its reflection of friendship during the turbulent process of growing up and coming into oneself amid social and societal expectations.

“Female friendships can be extraordinarily complex in a way that feels daunting to articulate and ‘Likewise’ communicates this phenomenon efficiently and effectively,” Merril wrote in an email to The Argus. “I have been a version of Callie, and I have been a version of Joey.”

Moran, in particular, is a powerhouse of a performer, seamlessly transitioning from scene to scene, imagined setting to setting—always aware of her audience, always performing for herself, her mother, or her therapist Erica (voiced by April Schwartz ’24). It’s hilarious, heartbreaking in parts, and so relatable, as if Moran plucked the running commentary in every teenage girl’s head—scathing and self-centered—and reproduced it into “Likewise.”

“I couldn’t go back to sleep, he’s a full-grown man-boy starfishing in my twin bed,” Joey declares after sleeping with the suicide hotline guy Jake (voiced by Compton Stewart ’24). “I pretended to be asleep in, like, six different pretty positions. Nothing.”

It was this same relatability that drew director Bannon Brody ’24 towards this project. Brody and Moran had met in “Face the Blank Page” (THEA259) during their sophomore year, where Moran brought in an early version of “Likewise,” then a conversation between a girl and her therapist.

“What struck me reading [‘Likewise’] was that it really captured the way that teenage girls speak to each other,” Brody said. “I haven’t actually seen that done that well ever–in life. I think that it comes from that balance of we’re talking about very hard things, but we’re also doing bits. We also are sort of always doing bits, but the bits are grounded in these very real changes and craziness that are happening in our lives.”

Moran continued to plot and outline the play over the summer, and she workshopped scenes during her Advanced Poetry Workshop with Assistant Professor of the Practice in Theater Edwin Sanchez. Auditions for “Likewise” occurred in early December 2023, and it was not until the last week of winter break that the actors came together for a table read and their first rehearsals.

“It was really surprising and rewarding in a lovely way that everyone really took on their character as their own,” Moran said. “We got to have a lot of really wonderful, fruitful conversations where Paige, especially, would just jump right in and get specific in all the ways that we built out the world. I was really, really grateful for how everyone brought in their own creative energy and really filled up the world with ‘this is what she wears, this is what she does, this is how she spends her free time.’”

“Likewise” is also notable in that for three of the four actors, their acting primarily occurs off-stage, their voices projected over the sound system, giving the production an anxiety-fueled, dreamlike quality.

“Theater is a mode of communication, and a large facet of communication is non-verbal,” Merrill wrote. “When I am acting offstage, I am only communicating through my voice in dialogue, which causes me to place heavier emphasis on the cadence and tone of my voice. This production allowed me to grow as an actor through the delicate attention I had to use in listening and responding to my scene partner without the luxury of responding to physical and facial cues.”

The performance is only more impressive in light of the condensed production schedule, which Moran and other members of her team—stage manager Maddie Morehead ’25, one-woman stage crew Kiara Reeves ’26, and sound and light board operator Luciel Sanchez ’24—had previous experience with during Spring 2023 in “Top Girls,” a senior directing thesis by Annabella Machnizh ’23. The crew is rounded out by Aden Sheingold ’26 on sound and Henry Owens ’25 on lighting. The music is a combination of compositions by Moran’s brother Patrick and the “Likewise” pre-show playlist, which includes songs such as boygenius’ “Not Strong Enough,” Rockwell’s “Someone’s Watching Me,” and Taylor Swift’s “this is me trying.”

All in all, “Likewise” is a triumph. A masterclass in the convalescence between girlhood, friendship, trauma, and the sheer impossibility of growing up as and into a young woman unscathed, this production is a must-see and requires more than a fair share of tissues. This is to say: I believe deeply in Kiera Moran. And you should too.

The production is currently sold out, and as of the time of this publication, the show on Thursday, Feb. 29 will have passed. However, those interested in attending without a ticket should go to the Theatre Department Studio before show times at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 1 or Saturday, March 2 for last-minute seating.

Rose Chen can be reached at rchen@wesleyan.edu.